


springtime

by too_much_in_the_sun



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Gen, M/M, mad scientists are bad at self-care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 05:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3924130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/too_much_in_the_sun/pseuds/too_much_in_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor convalesces under Clerval's watchful eye, as the long winter comes to an end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	springtime

**Author's Note:**

> This may be the only Frankenstein thing I've written that isn't slightly AU.

Victor watches spring come from the window of his bedroom that year. It is still too cold to risk his health on a walk, so every morning Clerval helps him to his cushioned window seat, wraps a blanket around his shoulders, and departs to Victor’s study under the guise of returning to his work. But Victor senses that, if Clerval so much as had an inkling that Victor needed his help, he would throw aside his books of poetry and come running to his side.

The windowglass is thin, like the first ice of winter under his fingers, and he can hear the street noises through it with only slight muffling. The birds seem to peer in at him, as if he is a specimen on the stage of a microscope, and when he puts his fingers to the glass, the cold air presses back at him. The world wants him back in it, and Victor isn’t ready to return. 

This spring is mild and slow in coming, and the last snowfall of the season isn't until mid-May. Before that Victor often finds himself watching the little flakes drift earthward during his vigil by the window.

Spring is not his favorite season. The crisp air is pleasant enough, but there is a certain vulgarity to it that he cringes away from. Elizabeth waxed poetic on the beauty of buds and new growth, and he could never understand what she saw there that was beautiful.

The buds on the cherry tree in the courtyard are a pale green that reminds him of Henry’s eyes, and that is beautiful enough. As they open they assume the lacy curves of their final form, and that too is beautiful.

Yet before that they are wet, wrinkled, and obscene, as terribly ugly as any newborn. 

No, he does not like spring.

The faint memory, dreamlike in its fadedness, flits across his mind: the chilly darkness, lit by the flicker of distant lightning outside. He had woken with a start to a pain in his head, a certainty that something was wrong. And he had heard a voice in the dim room, familiar and unfamiliar, rusty with disuse, colored with the sweet  _joie de vivre_  of a songbird’s piping:

“ _Mama – mama?_ ”

He feels very tired all of a sudden. He clutches the blanket closer about himself and concentrates on watching the sparrows nesting in the gutter just outside the window. Every day their nest grows a little closer to completion.


End file.
